Analysts who have taken on the question of why the industrial revolution occurred in Europe have proposed several theories, each of which, alone, fails to adequately explain the phenomenon. Some have attributed the industrialization to imperialism, but some economically successful countries grew prosperous before imperialism and some, such as Norway and Switzerland, avoided imperialism altogether. Possession of natural resources has also been put forth as a possibl

Lacking a large human capital stock on which to draw for labor, the Europeans turned to domesticated animals to produce much of the labor for them. With fewer children to provide for, more could be invested in producing strong animals, and in educating the human labor force as well, who, with spare time provided by not working the fields, could turn to other endeavors, such as woodworking. Europeans enjoyed better clothing, more varied food, more furniture and more household utensils than did their counterparts in China and India.

Asia lagged behind Europe in mechanical engineering. Large civil engineering and luxury court projects provided abundance that appeared monumental and grand, but such projects were enjoyed by a small elite. It is estimated that at the start of the fourteenth century, the combined peoples of France, Germany and Britain supported 15 percent of the population through peasant work (meaning that 85 percent of the population were peasants). As late as the 1880s, however, 2 percent of the population of China consumed more than 24 percent of the national product, a statistic which indicates the high level of poverty endured by the very poor (Jones 4).

The industrial revolution, then, occurred in the west because of inherently different social structures. There was more emphasis on the nuclear family, and less on the extended family. marriages were delayed, and fewer children were born in the west. Disasters took a higher toll in the east than in the west, and the climate was friendlier to the human capital stock of the west than the east. Fewer floods and earthquakes eliminated the need for much surplus population.

But these differences alone do not account for the industrial revolution. Europe was apparently in a better position to take advantage of the knowledge that began to rapidly accumulate as a result of the renaissance (much of it from Asian and Islamic cultures). Western science organized a better attack on the secrets of nature, and used greater resources in that endeavor, than did other cultures, according to some analysts (Rosenberg and Birdzell 43).

By 1550, London dominated the trade of English cloth, which accounted for as much as 80 percent of all overseas trade at the time (Barker 45). Good internal communications as well as joint ventures ensured that London would survive after the collapse of the Antwerp market. It should be noted that the cloth which London exported was not actually produced in the city. Instead, the cloth was made in the shires, where underemployed peasants had begun making the cloth as part of the cottage industry which was happening throughout England. Peasants were underemployed because they used draft animals instead of human capital, leaving them the time to take up the manufacture of cloth, for example. The provinces were able to meet the London demand, and the demand increased with the provinces' ability to produce. Thus was born an industrial growth relationship between the provinces and London that maximized growth during the sixteenth century (47).

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